Rules Changes to make the D&D more Gothic...

[Boccaccio Barbarossa]

I have little to offer about the hit points question - I don't think much needs be done about that, so long as your characters are able to role-play as IF 1d4 damage was enough to kill them then they'll react accordingly to threats.

About alignment: I agree that the game has come a long way since alignment was sufficient to account for moral/ethical outlook. The main reason is simply: alignment is something someone else i likely to be able to say bout you, but not necessarily something you are aware of on a conscious level. As far as you are concerned, you act in a certain way, in most circumstances and you proably feel your path is the right path.

Now, I agree that a setting like, say DragonLance, is built on this Fantasy ideal that Good and Evil are real forces that people pay close attention to. They are clearly defined concepts that most people can agree upon. But the beauty of Ravenloft is that, much like in the real world, ethics and morality are always up in the air. the question will NEVER besolved, absolutely, to anyone's satisfaction. And, in many ways, evail and good are relative to the individual - we all have a slightly different sense of good and evil, and even circumstances that can justify

Example: we can probaly agree that killing is BAD. But is it EVIL? What if you kill for vengeance? Self-defense? Your country? To denfend your family? Your honour? To put someone out of their misery? Let's say a samurai lets his traitorous wife be killed by his lord because it is his duty to kill her. Was that an evil act? At seems "lawful," but what determines it: the act, or the intent?

What makes ravenloft so compelling (for me and the people I play with, in any event) is that realisation that every domain/culture has a different definition of evil. For some, evil is Chaos. For others, it is Law, say. In some places, it may be seen as okay to to kill someone in a duel, whereas in another it would be seen as murder.

Which brings me back to alignment. The fact is, alignment categories are meant to be thought of as universal. But they are VERY relative and culturally defined. So, the question then becomes: how do you set up, in a place that is about good and evil, the moral/ethical bar? How do you define it? I think there are no easy answers to that one but that a game system could NEVER capture all of that. The closet thing to that are Powers Checks and even then, you have to be very careful how you use those.

If anything, the only reason one needs alignment in for those situations where you need a way to measure a character's morality for the purposes of gameplay, in some "objective" sense. Personally, I don't find the system all that restrictive: you work with it and alignment sits there in the background until you need it for some game mechanics purpose. (and even then, it would be perfectly reasonable, in some circumstances dependant upon Role-Playing, to disregard it or stretch it's boundaries)Otherwise, I know that we pay very little attention to it. maybe that's the best system of all...

(Whem! That was long-winded! )

[mcvoid]

I agree with the alignment thing, but Ravenloft already compensates for this by removing an absolute good and evil so characters have to navigate their morals by their gut. The rule was never broken, but maybe the implementaion was. As for grittyness, throw in the vitality/wounds thing for more realistic injuries and make the spell cast cost vitality points. Necromacy costs double. People will avert from magic and will aid in making it more folklorish and prone to superstition. Make the prestige classes harder to get and prestigious, so they don't have crazy matrix-like abilities. That will make for a gritty game that fits into ravenloft much more smoothly.

[WolfKook]

I'm also doing soe tinkering with the rules, and have taken some similar decisions:

• I changed Alignments and replaced them with allegiances. Although I guess what everyone has said about alignment as a point of view rather than a guideline, it is also true that some players take it as such, and I prefer not to have this kind of "excuse" in my table: PC personalities should be deep and interesting in a gothic setting, not defined just by one or two words. I also like virtues and vices, though it seems to me that it belongs somewhere else.
  
  I, for one, support the GoT hit point system, and prefer it to the SW wound system, which is perfect to create cinematic effects, but not as gritty as I would like it to be. In Ravenloft, the characters should be afraid of their opponents, and this system will keep them on their toes. As for the high body count, it is unnecessary if the story revolves around horror over combat, and if the players don't do stupid things. I like Alhoon's system, a lot, an it seems to be just what i needed. Obviously, as he says, this option needs a lot of tinkering on the DM's part: Monsters should also have less hp, spells should not deal huge amounts of damage in the brink of an eye, etc.
  
  To level up the lower hit point count and the lack of magical armor, I have also implemented the rules on Base Defense Bonus and Armor as Damage Reduction presented in Unearthed Arcana (Credit due, I did it more as it is shown in Iron Heroes, with dice rolled for Damage Reduction, instead of a fixed DR rating). This way, the PCs are in danger everytime they are hit, but they are hit less often. -A little cruel add-on was to apply armor check penalties to Defense (AC). This forces players to take hard decisions on whether having DR or a high Defense.

I did some other changes, but they seem to be beyond the reach of this thread. I will comment them if anybody asks me, though.

[wolfgang_fener]

About the HP question, if you really want to remove the dices and set a fixed number, I wuold suggest to give more hit point to the rogues who often live a hard life on the streets, not like the average sheltered wizard nerds.


About aligment, Here's what I'm concidering doing. You could very well keep the normal system but remove it on your player's sheet. Then you the DM can keep a log of each pcs aligment. For exemple, on a sheet of paper you have all the PCs name and a 4 (or points star with Good to the "north", Evil to the "southe" anc Chaos and Law on the "East-West" axis. Each time one make some particular evil act or a serie of smaller evil acts, you mark a cross on the Evil side and so one for the other behaviors. That way you end up knowing who is what but it is not that obvious to the players. In RL, spells can only give an indication on the Law-Chaos axis and that's all the players will be able to know anyway.

By the way, it is also up to you to role play the evil guys not always like the archetypal bad guys. Sometimes an evil person can look like a good guy depending on circonstances, just because it suits him to cooperat with the pc at a given time for exemple. I've done that a lot, even in non-RL campaign where at least one pc had the power to detect it but I just never gave them any reason to suspect anything... Then one day when the bad guy didn't need them anymore, he ran out with some magical loot never to be seen again !

[Igor the Henchman]

First and foremost: I'm removing Alignments. This is done so that both PCs and NPCs aren't dictated by a pair of words and actually have to make real choices. It removes the simplistic crutch of "I do it because I'm Chaotic Good" or "We kill him because he's Evil." It creates characters, PC and NPC, with three dimensions.

I have no insight to offer on the HP issue, but I'd invite you to examine the alignment system a little more before you deem it useless. I heard many DMs in different places arguing to get rid of it, but IMO, there's a fact that often gets forgotten: alignment isn't just there to help the players decide their characters' motives. Its a storytelling tool, and as such, gets used by DMs well more often than by players during a game. I'm not saying you can't play a great game without alignment. I just think its a heck of a DM's life-saver when building adventures.

The MAIN use of alignment the way I see it, is to assign clear, easy-to-figure-out roles for each character in the story you're building. You use it to distinguish Heroes from Villains from Everyone Else In The Story. My own games owe a lot to this simple story structure. Think of how easy it makes story-building when you know that Good=Hero or Ally, and Evil=bad guy. Neutral is for NPCs who don't fit either role, it exists to add uncertainty and moral ambiguity to the adventure environment. Assigning an Evil alignment to a character is DM-speak for "Its OK for you to kick this guy's butt". Assigning a Neutral alignment is saying "this one might be friend or foe - use caution". Given time, its a language the DM and his players learn to speak fluently together.

Players speak it too, especially at character creation. Saying "I'm chaotic good" is saying "I'm OK with adventures where I kick some evil butt, but don't expect me to get all valiant for no reason". Saying "I'm true neutral" is decoded "I'm neither good guy, nor bad guy - my motivations are more complex than that". For a DM, these labels are absolutely invaluable, because it lets you understand the kind of expectation the players have of your game. If everyone arrives at the table with a bunch of chaotic neutral characters, you know they're asking for a different sort of story than if they're mostly lawful to neutral good. Alignment is a very elegant signal system between DMs and players. There's its true usefulness, and I think its a mistake to under-estimate it.

That said, removing alignments might not be a bad idea for your own game (I'd even say that Ravenloft handles this house rule better than traditional D&D). Just don't forget all they can do for you when you use them well.

[Igor the Henchman]

Actually, a good idea could be taken from the Star Wars d20 RPG.

You have "Vitality Points" and "Wound Points." Vitality points work identically to Hit Points (in most cases -- they also are used to power Force abilities), but represent heroic luck and skill at rolling with punches more than physical well-being.

Wound Points are always, no matter your level, equal to your Constitution. Wound points come into play when you run out of Vitality -- or when you suffer a Critical Hit. In lieu of additional damage, Crits in SWd20 bypass Vitality and directly wound you, which is a nasty thing, fatigue-effects you. Wounds are also harder to heal than Vitality. Thus even a legendary hero still risks death in a tavern brawl, as even a tough as hell Dwarf will still have a max of 25 Wound Points at 20th level...

..the only awkwardness would be in the fact that there are no noted x3-x4, whatever critical weapons in the books I have thusfar, so that would take some DM-monkeying.. maybe have x3 do damage x1.5 rounded up and x4 weaposn do wound damage equal to damage x2? Seems reasonable...

D&D accessory Unearthed Arcana adapts the system to traditional D&D. Critical hits' damage isn't multiplied - but is substracted directly from your Wound point total. I've tried that variant rule for a two-session adventure, and found it was lots of fun. Mainly, it had a profound effect on how the PCs dealt with combat: for the first time in my games, moderately wounded characters started considering to "re-friggin'-treat!" from the monsters and adopt hit-and-run tactics against enemies, rather than charge in.

[Jack of Tears]

So, the question arises, why are you reducing Hit Points?

Really, ask yourself this. Is it so the players will die more often or so the players cannot look at their characters and say "Oh, I have 50 hps left, I can take two more of these creatures."

If it is the second reason, consider another option. Rather than giving the pcs fewer hit points, how about keeping track of their hit points yourself? I know this has been argued back and forth, but if you are looking to keep the game "gritty" in that you don't want people taking heroic chances based upon numbers they can readily perceive, then this works well.

Instead, you describe how wounded a player is and let him decide if he's willing to take chances. You give the pc a general idea of how wounded they are, "Battered" [above 75% hp], "Injured" [between 50-75% of their hit points], "Bleeding" [between 25-50%], or "Near Death" [below 25%]. The words you actually choose aren't important, so long as the pcs understand your cues. In this way you are taking away the certainty that comes with knowing one has 70hps and replacing it with the uncertainty accompanied by words such as "Heavily injured". To further this goal, you might even take it upon yourself to roll the pcs hit points for them, when they achieve a new level.

Some might complain that this is taking some power away from the pcs, as they can't make informed decisions ... but reducing hit points isn't going to drive home the danger of the setting so much as it is going to insure the players seek lesser challenges. Even a well trained warrior isn't going to have a "life meter" in his head, so keeping hps secret, but providing clues to how injured one might be is a good way to approximate a more "realistic" experience.

This also requires the characters to assess situations based on estimations, which means you will see that "life preservation" instinct presented more honestly than you might if you let them see their hps. "Heroes" suddenly become more than people who fight when their life meter is up.

Just make certain that if you do this, you keep accurate record of those hp behind your screen, so you can show that to players should they die and become suspicious you'd cheated them. (though this does give you the option of fudging in their favor without them ever knowing)

[Luke Fleeman]

Some ideas I have been tinkering with and discussing elsewhere:

On Healing: Healing spells only turn lethal damage to subdual damage. It is easier to heal the damage now through rest, but combat is tougher because there is not rampant healing. This means more limping away from villains for the chase and more dramatics, but still allows for healing. (this is also good for questioning why the local priest can't make everyone better- it takes rest and prayer.)

On Alignment: Some people use it wrong. It is not an Absolute Unyielding Must follow Code. It is a roleplaying tool. It helps desribe how a character acts. Don't let it, in any setting, control everything.

On Magic: Use less. It should be there, be potent, and be useful, but when there is less of it, and it is more of a mysterious factor, it feels more like a gothic game. If there are magic items and wizards all over, the setting loses some of the feeling of Gothic Horror, where magic is a tool of villains or eccentric heroes, and not common. removing some more over-the-top spells and resurection style spells may help.

On Skills: Requiring more skill checks, encourage skill-based feats, and having less combats can help too.

[Dion of the Fraternity]

On alignment: "Heroes of Horror" gave the idea of "behavioral alignments," which means that even if alignment detection exists in your campaign, your lawful evil alignment wouldn't manifest if for example you're doing nothing buying jeans in a clothing store. This I guess would be okay if you don't want to get rid of the alignment grid.

[Jakob]

In my next Ravenloft campaign, I got rid of Hit Points and went with the Thoughness of the True20.
I played a few trial sessions with one of the players, and it seems to work just fine. I only have to get used to it.

About alignements, I never felt the need to change the system, especially in Ravenloft, where I took away even the detect law/chaos spell.
I changed, instead, the way some of the clerical spells work, basing them not on alignement, but on faith.
Let's take a holy smite spell cast by a cleric of Belenus.
A faithful of Belenus would register as "good", taking no damage.
An atheist or a worshipper of the rest of the pantheon (let's say... Mannan Mac Lir?) would register as "neutral".
A sworn enemy of the church (a fey, an hag, a goblin, for example...), or a character worshipping another deity, would register as "evil", taking full damage.

I'm still thinking about some minor flaw, but, again, it seems to be working.

[Luke Fleeman]

Thats not bad for a smite rule. Smite the unbelievers!

I think you could reasonably extend it. If a deity's goals or worshippers are opposed to another, you could smite them.

Or if you worshipped, say, a god of Life, then you could smite undead and those who make them.

Or whatever. But its a good way to go.

[Jakob]

Of course, this to remove the concept that a cleric of the Lawgiver would say he casts blasphemy... For every church in the Core, its spells would have a "good" name.
I mean that, from their POW, clerics of the Lawgiver would cast THEIR holy word.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I respectfully disagree with the notion that it's "more Gothic" to do away with the D&D notions of Good and Evil. On the contrary, classic Gothic literature is very much in synch with the notion that Good and Evil are absolutes; indeed, it advocates and vividly demonstrates how acts of evil rebound upon their perpetrators, in a fate-like Western equivalent of "karma", for all that it may take generations for due restitution to be paid in full.

Rather, what makes a story or game-setting "Gothic" -- and scary, as the RLDMG rightly points out -- is that such concrete absolutes exist, but fallible mortals' understanding of them is imperfect. A villain may have convinced himself that his wicked actions are justified by ethics or circumstances, but he's only fooling himself: following through on such hubristic conceits will only bring him suffering and frustration. A heroine who thinks herself flawed and weak, and appears helplessly caught up in events beyond her power to control, may nevertheless be delivered the rare opportunity to right a terrible wrong, provided she stays true to her principles. Gothic literature, in fact, lives by the same basic principles as high-fantasy game settings like Dragonlance -- "Good redeems its own" and "Evil turns upon itself" -- but it's set apart by the fact that the players on-stage aren't told that their world works this way, and can believe with all their hearts that they're on the opposite side in the Good-vs-Evil struggle, or that the sides (or just the Good one) don't even exist.

Rather than doing away with alignment, Ravenloft would be more Gothic IMO if we continued with what the removal of Detect Evil/Good spells began, and made alignment entirely transparent in-character. Rather than make "Evil" or "Good" effects religion-specific, they could be keyed to the motivation behind the spellcasting: if the aforementioned cleric of Belenus casts Smite at hostile goblin raiders -- or a bunch of Good-aligned strangers he honestly thinks are a threat -- it works like Smite Evil; if the same cleric casts Smite at defenseless civilians he's attacking purely out of bigotry, it works like Smite Good. The DM (and thus, the Dark Powers) knows which version of the spell was cast; the cleric only knows that Belenus' power was "with him" when he struck down the goblins -- or the innocents -- but the deity "restrained His hand" and spared the strangers, for some inscrutable reason.

[Luke Fleeman]

Post of the day.

I have been a long time defender of alignment, and I applaud this sentiment. I think that the fact there is good or evil does contribute to horror, or as you said, with the fallible understanding.

The other thing it contriubtes to is a sort of philosophical discussion. When do the good guys cease to be good, and does their battle with evil affect them? Is there anythign more horrifying than losing who you are in the battle?

[wolfgang_fener]

removing some more over-the-top spells and resurection style spells may help.

Without removing it entirely, you can do as I did nd make it more difficult.

Raise-dead age the caster 1 year and cost 1000gp worth of holy oils, encences and such. The raised character returns with 1 hp and must heal naturally all its hp. The caster and the raised character must have complete rest for at least 1 day per HD/level raised.

Resurection is the same except it takes 3 years out of the caster but the raised character raise up fully healed and doesn't need rest.

Instead of using 1 and 3 years, we could make it at least 1 and 3% of the venerable age base for a given race of caster, that way elven priests would age enough to see it as a problem too. Also note that the menal benefits of reaching old age (bonus intelligence and wisdom) is only obtained through long years of real experience but the physical malus (constitution and strenght loss) are related to the state of the body. A pc never benefit from artificially aging its character.